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(Image source: )Passive income.That’s the dream, right?Make money while you sleep.For 99% of people, affiliate marketing is how they get started.The idea behind it is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network, earning a commission if people actually end up buying thanks to your marketing.It’s based on revenue sharing. If you have a product and want to sell more, you can offer promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program.
Odds are you've read claims of affiliate marketing programs that say you can make hundreds of. 5 Online Businesses You Can Start With No Money. If entrepreneurship, online marketing or anything online business is your niche then there’s a lot of affiliate programs out there for you. The commissions vary, and the products too. From education to software there’s a lot to look at so here’s a simple demo of some of the solid affiliate programs you can sign up for.
If you have no product and want to make money, then you can promote a product that you feel has value and earn an income from it as an affiliate marketer., but today I want to dive deeper into what actually is, what sides there are to it, and how to get started. So, let’s dive into my affiliate marketing guide. DefinitionsThe best definition of what affiliate marketing is can be found on:Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make. (Image source: )I will explain all 4 parties in a second.
( is one of the most popular affiliate network sites)The Consumer: The customer or consumer makes the affiliate system go ’round. Anyone can sign up and then generate a custom affiliate link to Amazon products.
If someone purchases through your link, you earn a small commission.With the basic terms clarified, let’s get an overview of how you can best get started with building your affiliate marketing business. Apparently, people really want to know how to build cool sandcastles. So, what could you do?Record a series of videos where you show people, step-by-step, how to build 5 very specific, epic sandcastles.Or, you can do a write-up of all of the tools that you need to build epic sandcastles.You could even come up with some forms or stencils that people can use to make building epic sandcastles a whole lot easier.The question iswill people pay for it? Step 2: Validating your ideaIn order to not end up doing a great series of sandcastle videos that no one wants to buy, you have to first validate your idea.How do you do that?Simple: You ask people to pay you for it.How do you find these people?
Easy.Take the URL from one of the sandcastle posts on Buzzsumo and plug it into a tool called. Once you cross your threshold and make sure that people actually want it, you can start creating the product.
Step 3: Creating the productThere are a ton of steps to follow for creating a product and this isn’t an entrepreneurship guide, but I want to point you to some good starters.I’ll only give you resources for starting digital products, because I don’t want you to waste precious time and money on creating a physical product on your first try ?Online courses:.Ebooks:.Podcast/Audio:.These are good starting points. Creating digital products is a lot easier, since it just takes time and sometimes a little financial investment, but usually not more than a service fee or a one-time price for software.Once you have the product created and delivered to your initial buyers, it’s time to open up the affiliate network. Step 4: Finding affiliate program partnersThe tech part is the easy thing here.With tools like or, you can easily set up affiliate program partners and allow them to collect commissions. Contacting them and getting them to cooperate on a sale together would be an easy pitch because it’s a perfect fit.The more niche your product is, the easier it will be to pitch to fellow merchants.You can simply send them an email, introduce yourself and your product and ask them if they want to partner on a sale together, where you’ll share revenue.Pro tip: Affiliate c ommissions of 50% or higher are very common with digital products because you have no cost of replication. Don’t be greedy here, split the pot evenly and everyone wins.Googling “toy review blog” also gives plenty of results, where people write toy reviews. Just try finding one person to partner up with and start your first affiliate promotion.
You can adjust commissions and details later, the important part is to get started.However, you could also start the journey on the other side of the fence and just become an affiliate yourself. 4 steps to becoming an online affiliate marketerSimilarly to becoming a merchant, there are also 4 steps that you can take to start your journey as an affiliate marketer.First, you need to start reviewing products in your niche. That can be done on a YouTube channel, on a blog or even just using live streams on.Second, you have to collect emails, so that you can connect with your audience at any time you want and don’t have to hope for them to see your content.Third, you can use joint venture webinars to make a lot of sales in a short period of time, while simultaneously growing your email list and creating new content.Finally, once your affiliate marketing business starts making money, you can scale your growth with pay per click advertising.
Step 1: Review products in your nicheIt’s easier to get started as an affiliate because you’re skipping the ‘have an idea’ and ‘creating an idea’ parts of becoming a merchant.You already use and like plenty of products, so all that you have to do get started is to publicly talk about them.Start by looking at the partners in step 4 for becoming a merchant, because that’s what you’re trying to start in this step.Any product works.Really.Take a look at. This blog reviews flat irons for straightening hair (for women). How specific of a blog is that?She can relate to the product, as she needs to straighten her own hair. However, if you only rely on people using the affiliate links in your reviews, that means that you need lots of traffic to actually start making serious money.But, if you find a way to contact your audience directly, you can market to them whenever you like, not just when they come to your website.This is where step 2 comes in. Step 2: Build an email list with your prospects on it, so don’t miss out on it.I’ll show you 3 super easy ways to collect email addresses from your website visitors.Number 1:Hello Bar puts a call to action on top of your website. Whenever someone visits your website, they’ll see this bar at the top.You can offer them an ebook (maybe bundle together your 3 best product reviews) or a special review video.
Since you’re collecting email addresses around a very specific topic, such as finding the best straightening iron, juice maker, mini-oven, etc., you don’t need a lot of them to make the email list worth your time.Even with less than 500 people on your list, you can create significant sales.Just make sure that you keep your audience engaged, by sending them regular updates, ideally once a week.Don’t make it all sales. Just let them know when you have a new review up.For example, I email out every single post that we do on Quick Sprout with a very simple description of what it’s about. Every now and then, send them a specific call to action to buy a product. Perhaps you just found a new favorite in the latest review and think it’s really great.You can update your audience on your change of mind, the reasons why and recommend that they switch to that product also.But, there’s more. Once you have a few contacts on your email list, you can do this. Step 3: Educate your audience with live webinarsWebinars are awesome.Imagine that you want to buy a new fridge.What makes you want to buy a fridge more:.
Reading a review on a blog. Seeing a live presentation of a fridge in actionNumber 2 of course!Using a tool, like, you can create a simple landing page where people can sign up for your webinar. (Image source: )Webinars are great to engage with your audience one on one, show them the product that you’re promoting live and answer any questions that they might have.You can:. present the product’s features. show different use cases of the product.
talk about its benefits and drawbacks. tell people your personal history with the product. help your audience get the most out of itand much more.Tip: Learning how to host a webinar with a Google Hangout takes less than 10 minutes.
Proof?.Imagine how fired up your audience will get when they see all of the cool things that your product will enable them to do.Pointing to your affiliate link and sharing it at the end of the webinar is a soft sell and comes naturally since you just spent an hour talking about the product.It won’t feel forced and your consumers can still take all of the time that they want to make up their mind on whether they’ll actually purchase.Pro tip: Can you get your merchant to give you a special deal for your audience? If you promise to get their product in front of a couple hundred people, they’ll often happily give you a discount or special bundle to further incentivize people to buy. These guys also provide a software for creating landing pages, so it’s an easy way for them to get in front of someone else’s audience.Now, while you could try to target people who are just trying to find a review of your product, you’d probably be better off.The percentage of people who buy straight through your link after reading a review is naturally low, so imagine paying for these reads. Depending on the product price, you only get a few dollars or even cents per sale, so the margin you can spend on ads is not very big.In most cases, your best off promoting sign-ups to your email list.As a matter of fact, getting people to sign up for a webinar with ads is the best way to go.